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Advice for lighting a scene with a night to day transition


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Hello all,

 

I have a bit of a dilemma with a scene I am shooting where the director would like the lighting to change from night to day in one shot.

 

The shot is in a (small) kitchen on a mid of a man sleeping at a table. We have a 400w HMI, 2k blonde as well as an 800w fresnel and 2 650's. We don't see the window in this frame which does help out a little. I was thinking of simply blacking out the window and then slowly letting the light come through starting at the top and moving down so the daylight hits the top of the ceiling first and then spills down to fill the room, then re creating the night light from outside, inside with one of the smaller lights.

 

Does this sound like the right idea for the given situation?

 

We could alternatively shoot when it's dark outside and then fake the daylight.

 

Any comments would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Tom

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You have to dim out your night look and then fade in your sunrise look. I assume you can't see a lamp dimming off in the background magically because this is supposed to be more like a fake time-lapse shot so a lamp would be left on or off unless someone hit the switch.

 

That sort of suggests the man is sleeping in moonlight or a streetlamp, unless you can get away with a room light dimming off of him.

 

Whatever the night look is, pre-dawn would be soft blue light then very warm sun fading up coming straight in (not from below hitting the ceiling, you'd have to be in a really tall building or on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean to the east to get the sun to come up from below the house), then the sun would rise and get hotter and less warm.

 

Seems all rather elaborate for the number of lights you have and if you are using household power... the 2K blonde is the obvious choice for the sun -- you want to shine it in from one side and its helpful if there is a real window to create the right shadow patterns, but this means doing everything at night. You'd need a 2K variac dimmer. Dimmed low, it would have a reddish glow like the early sun. You'd need some sort of jib arm to raise it, and somehow you'd have to tilt it down as it raises. Before that, you'd need a blue-ish soft glow to fade up in the room, maybe with the 400w HMI panning slowly into a big bounce. And before that, the streetlamp effect would have to fade out, maybe the 650w on another dimmer, gelled to whatever you want for a streetlamp or moonlight.

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